In a world where age matters, a fading celebrity who is slowly pushed aside receives a unique drug that creates a younger version of herself.
Hitchcockian, stylised, surreal, and shocking! While the concept is not unique, its development and execution are. The film’s unmistakable message is that people, and especially women, need to stay young and beautiful in order to stay relevant, matter and be liked. Try to find one likeable man throughout the film. You won’t. Everyone is either a coward, weirdo, or disgusting. On the other hand, besides Elizabeth and Sue, all women in the film are irrelevant. And while they are the same person, Elizabeth (the old self) is so insecure that she takes something she has never heard before and has no idea what it will do to her. Upon taking it and seeing the results, she despises herself so much that Sue (the young self) creates her own personality, completing the split. She detaches herself from herself, blaming herself for being herself. Enough said. From then on, the chaos, the madness, and the abyss of the human soul spiral out of control in ways you haven’t thought about or seen before.
From an aesthetic and technical point of view, producer/writer/editor/director Coralie Fargeat, composer Raffertie, director of photography Benjamin Kracun, and editors Jerome Eltabet and Valentin Féron create a dystopian present that resembles The Matrix (1999), which is as fake as The Matrix. Slow-mos, snappy editing that cuts to what matters, polished and stylised close-ups and long shots, and loud beats give life to a world with exaggerated fancy colours, surreal houses and people, and out-of-this-world kicks and knees. But this world wouldn’t be complete if the make-up department didn’t go out of its way to create the monstrosity you are about to witness. Finally, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley are phenomenal as Elizabeth and Sue, respectively.
Fargeat pushed it to the limits. She intended to shock you, and this is precisely what she did. Here is the beauty of cinema: Fargeat raises exactly the same questions as Richard Garr in Baby Reindeer (2024): https://kaygazpro.com/baby-reindeer-2024/. How much does success mean to you? How much happiness means to you? Which one comes first? Which one makes you complete as a human being? Ultimately, how far are you willing to pursue success and happiness? Yet, the two of them couldn’t be more antithetical.
Fargeat puts Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Hitchcock, David Cronenberg, The Wachowskis and Darren Aronofsky into the mix, and the result pays off. It is an old wine in a combination of new bottles that affects the perspective of the content. I’ll leave you with a quote that surely rings a bell: “We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.”
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